Scientific Methods

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Mysteries of the unexplained...Crop circles unearthed

“Man cannot discover new oceans until he has the courage to lose sight of the shore” http://www.cropcircleresearch.com/. If we have learnt anything from the ideas of Quantum Mechanics, it’s that we can only experience things that our conscience believes possible, which we then bring into being. So then is it not possible that the answers to the questions we have about crop circles, and the fact that we disbelieve so much of their very existence is because we do not believe the answers to be possible? The first documented crop circle is the story of the Mowing – devil. The mowing devil is the title of an English woodcutters pamphlet published in 1678. It tells of a farmer who, refusing to pay the price demanded by a labourer to mow his field, swore that he would rather that the devil mowed it instead. According to the pamphlet, that night his field appeared to be in flame (which is in line with present day accounts of the balls of light most people see hovering over the places where circles are being created). The next morning, the field was found to be perfectly mowed - supernaturally perfect, in fact.This pamphlet, and the accompanying illustration, is often cited as among the first recorded cases of crop circles by cereologists. People who study these phenomena are cerealogists after Ceres the Roman god of agriculture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereology

I find that over the course of time mankind has shifted his blame for the things he can’t understand from the devil (and the occult) to now the employment of conspiracy theory. Now no one is prepared to believe that anything is beyond our comprehension, and that the technologies we have must be able explain absolutely everything in our universe. We seem convinced that behind every ‘wonder of nature’ there must be someone trying to pull our leg (take us for a ride).

A very good example of people using our skeptic nature to fool us into believing that crop circles are all man-made is a website http://www.circlemakers.org/tools.html hosted by a group called circlemakers, claiming to have created cropcircles using quite simple tools. The only problem with their work is that it cannot possibly explain the electromagnetic fields found in the genuine article, and most certainly cannnot mean that they had created these without breaking one single crop. I might also add that none of the crop circles which I saw on this website are nearly spectacular as the ones who no one has claimed to have made (sorry guys).

The first reported crop circle for 2006 is one in Brisbane, Australia in February http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2006/2006.html and seems to be a continuation of circles that appeared in more or less the same place in 2004, which definitely reinforces the beliefs of many people that these circles are in fact messages from other beings/planets/universes.

The evidence to show the very intruging plant abnormalities that exist in the crops in and around crop circles are truly amazing. They have been thouroughly researched and statistically analysed to 95% confidence levels by many scientists including Michigan biophysicist W.C. Levengood http://www.bltresearch.com/plantab.html . These include abnormal enlargement of cell wall pits in bract tissue, Enlarged (both laterally and longitudinally) plant stem nodes, Marked bending of the plant stem nodes, Bending at the base of the plant stem and Expulsion cavities (holes blown out at the plant stem nodes).

Then there are those who belive that the crop circle phenomenon can be explained by military powers US and UK using microwave technology to destroy enemy weaponry http://www.ovnis.atfreeweb.com/5_crop_circles.htm , well i dunno, they do present some good facts, but it then points right back to my devil-conspiracy theory hypothesis.

There are so many people claiming to know conclusively wo done it, but none I feel to my satisfaction so I will for now, until someone comes with a evidence based, repeatable or provable explinations be prepared to merely sit back in my armchair and admire one of lifes great mysteries of the unexplained.

CROP CIRCLES - WHAT SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE DO WE HAVE FOR A NON-ANTHROPOGENIC ORIGIN?

Hi Everyone

This is a message for the Pretoria group (NISL-EI learners) ONLY. I would like you to review at least some of the video material on Crop Circles, you are lucky that the Cape Town students have done this assignment (they started the course a little bit earlier), and I have to say they have really shown good insight and they are well prepared. I have sent up the marks for your Power Point projects with some comments, please ask for them if you have not got your marks. I got an external outsider to mark them. Some of the marks were not very good, mostly due to failure to read instructions, test your hyperlinks and to work accurately, or to put enough effort into doing the exercise. This is about the last chance to show that can do these things BETTER. You need to find some peer-reviewed material – have a look at the library chapter – CSIR subscribes to EbscoHost – I think (please tell me by way of comments which library databases CSIR subscribes to). To ensure that this last exercise is a bit more rigorous I have put up some 25 PDF document describing research on individual crop circles that have been investigated. They are not great but a least they are not just Wikipedia. Please find more material than Wikipedia

Please check your URLs – this morning when we started assessing your biodiversity answers we found lots of careless mistakes, and almost none of the URLs worked. Please remember 20% of all marks will be allocated to proper referencing and having enough referencing. OK so give it a go and try and get it correct. This assignment must be submitted using you Blogger accounts under you own name with your Signature files with working links!

PLEASE VERY VERY IMPORTANT – EVERYONE CHECK THAT YOUR EMAIL AND WEBLOG ADDRESS ARE CORRECT IN YOUR SIGNATURE FILES–SOME PEOPLE HAVE THIS WRONG. WHEN YOU SUBMIT YOUR POSTING CHECK THE LINKS AND SEE WHETHER THEY WORK! YOU CAN EDIT YOUR POSTING USING YOUR BLOGGER ACCOUNT! WE WILL CHECK THAT YOUR SIGNATURE FILE LINKS WORK AND IF THEY DO NOT ONE-THIRD OF MARKS WILL BE DEDUCTED.

Resources

This is show of aerial photographs of Crop Circles all fairly short - media designed by an Italian guy interested in the phenomena

About

An introduction to research techniques, planning, execution, analyses, and presentation of information. Reading and writing skills and interpretation of data. Preparation of scientific research for publication. This part of the module counts 10 credits

PLAGIARISM DECLARATION

I know that plagiarism is wrong. Plagiarism is to use anotherâs work and to pretend that it is oneâs own.

I have used the CSE/CBE convention for citation and referencing. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in this assignment from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced.

This assignment is my own work.

I have not allowed, and will not allow anyone to copy my work with the intention of passing it off as his or her own work.

In submitting work on this Internet Portal or through email correspondence or by hard copy for assessment, I abide by the rules of the Science Faculty, University of the Western Cape relating to plagiarism.

I accept that all assignments may be scanned electronically or manually for plagiarism.

I accept that in the event that material I submitted for assessment was found to be plagiarised that I will receive zero marks and will need to re-submit the work which will be marked to a maximum of 50% if this is the first case of plagiarism.

In the event of repeated occurrence of plagiarism I accept that disciplinary action leading to possible academic exclusion may result.

Late submission of work for assessment may incur a penalty of 15% per 24 hours as prescribed by the Science Faculty, University of the Western Cape.